Chapter 2

by Herman Melville

　　SHOWING THAT MANY MEN HAVE MANY MINDS."Odd fish!""Poor fellow!""Who can he be?""Casper Hauser.""Bless my soul!""Uncommon countenance.""Green prophet from Utah.""Humbug!""Singular innocence.""Means something.""Spirit-rapper.""Moon-calf.""Piteous.""Trying to enlist interest.""Beware of him.""Fast asleep here, and, doubtless, pick-pockets on board.""Kind of daylight Endymion.""Escaped convict, worn out with dodging.""Jacob dreaming at Luz."Such the epitaphic comments, conflictingly spoken or thought, of amiscellaneous company, who, assembled on the overlooking, cross-wisebalcony at the forward end of the upper deck near by, had not witnessedpreceding occurrences.Meantime, like some enchanted man in his grave, happily oblivious of allgossip, whether chiseled or chatted, the deaf and dumb stranger stilltranquilly slept, while now the boat started on her voyage.The great ship-canal of Ving-King-Ching, in the Flowery Kingdom, seemsthe Mississippi in parts, where, amply flowing between low, vine-tangledbanks, flat as tow-paths, it bears the huge toppling steamers, bedizenedand lacquered within like imperial junks.Pierced along its great white bulk with two tiers of smallembrasure-like windows, well above the waterline, the Fiddle, though,might at distance have been taken by strangers for some whitewashed forton a floating isle.Merchants on 'change seem the passengers that buzz on her decks, while,from quarters unseen, comes a murmur as of bees in the comb. Finepromenades, domed saloons, long galleries, sunny balconies, confidentialpassages, bridal chambers, state-rooms plenty as pigeon-holes, andout-of-the-way retreats like secret drawers in an escritoire, presentlike facilities for publicity or privacy. Auctioneer or coiner, withequal ease, might somewhere here drive his trade.Though her voyage of twelve hundred miles extends from apple to orange,from clime to clime, yet, like any small ferry-boat, to right and left,at every landing, the huge Fidle still receives additional passengersin exchange for those that disembark; so that, though always full ofstrangers, she continually, in some degree, adds to, or replaces themwith strangers still more strange; like Rio Janeiro fountain, fed fromthe Cocovarde mountains, which is ever overflowing with strange waters,but never with the same strange particles in every part.Though hitherto, as has been seen, the man in cream-colors had by nomeans passed unobserved, yet by stealing into retirement, and theregoing asleep and continuing so, he seemed to have courted oblivion, aboon not often withheld from so humble an applicant as he. Those staringcrowds on the shore were now left far behind, seen dimly clustering likeswallows on eaves; while the passengers' attention was soon drawn awayto the rapidly shooting high bluffs and shot-towers on the Missourishore, or the bluff-looking Missourians and towering Kentuckians amongthe throngs on the decks.By-and-by--two or three random stoppages having been made, and the lasttransient memory of the slumberer vanished, and he himself, notunlikely, waked up and landed ere now--the crowd, as is usual, began inall parts to break up from a concourse into various clusters or squads,which in some cases disintegrated again into quartettes, trios, andcouples, or even solitaires; involuntarily submitting to that naturallaw which ordains dissolution equally to the mass, as in time to themember.As among Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims, or those oriental ones crossingthe Red Sea towards Mecca in the festival month, there was no lack ofvariety. Natives of all sorts, and foreigners; men of business and menof pleasure; parlor men and backwoodsmen; farm-hunters and fame-hunters;heiress-hunters, gold-hunters, buffalo-hunters, bee-hunters,happiness-hunters, truth-hunters, and still keener hunters after allthese hunters. Fine ladies in slippers, and moccasined squaws; Northernspeculators and Eastern philosophers; English, Irish, German, Scotch,Danes; Santa F traders in striped blankets, and Broadway bucks incravats of cloth of gold; fine-looking Kentucky boatmen, andJapanese-looking Mississippi cotton-planters; Quakers in full drab, andUnited States soldiers in full regimentals; slaves, black, mulatto,quadroon; modish young Spanish Creoles, and old-fashioned French Jews;Mormons and Papists Dives and Lazarus; jesters and mourners, teetotalersand convivialists, deacons and blacklegs; hard-shell Baptists andclay-eaters; grinning negroes, and Sioux chiefs solemn as high-priests.In short, a piebald parliament, an Anacharsis Cloots congress of allkinds of that multiform pilgrim species, man.As pine, beech, birch, ash, hackmatack, hemlock, spruce, bass-wood,maple, interweave their foliage in the natural wood, so these mortalsblended their varieties of visage and garb. A Tartar-likepicturesqueness; a sort of pagan abandonment and assurance. Here reignedthe dashing and all-fusing spirit of the West, whose type is theMississippi itself, which, uniting the streams of the most distant andopposite zones, pours them along, helter-skelter, in one cosmopolitanand confident tide.